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Faygie Holt

Faygie Holt

Faygie Holt is the columns editor and editor of the JNS Wire.

Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, has suggested that Jews take on an extra mitzvah in the merit of the hostages.
“Simply put, there are no values advanced by giving her a forum to express her hateful and false views,” wrote the American Jewish Committee.
For months, Orthodox Jews have complained of a double standard as authorities seemed to let protesters in New York gather en masse while criticizing Jewish gatherings.
“We feel targeted, and his way of handling the situation is causing anti-Semitism to skyrocket to levels I haven’t seen in my lifetime,” Rivkie Feiner, a small-business owner in Rockland County, N.Y.
Whether synagogues or “whether talking about black churches or Roman Catholic Churches, the community must agree to the rules,” insisted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
An emphasis has again been placed on New York, where large crowds typically celebrate the holiday, and where, along with other parts of the country, cases of infection are on the rise.
Swaths of land have been burned, homes and businesses destroyed, thousands of people displaced, and the air is increasingly harder to breathe, just as the Jewish holidays approach.
Some will spread out congregants for social distancing, some will go ahead with abbreviated prayer sessions, and some will arrange for online programs, keeping folks at home.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) letter’s to the U.S. secretary of state, co-signed by 25 congressional colleagues, highlighted the fact that Ukraine’s travel ban has some exemptions.